Sioux Center High School’s FIRSTTech Challenge Robotics Team, Aluminerdy,
competed at the NW Iowa League Championship in Sioux City, Iowa January 31 on
the campus of WIT Community College.
The field of competitors consisted of twenty teams from across northwest
Iowa. The top five teams from this
competition advance to the FIRSTTech Challenge-Iowa Championship to be held
March 6 & 7 at the Marriott Hotel in Coralville. Qualifying Teams were” Marsupial Tech”, a 4-H
team from Sgt. Bluff,” BZ Club” from Trinity Christian in Hull, Sioux Center’s”
Aluminerdy”, Esterville-Lincoln Central “Midgets” and Sioux City West “The
50FIRST”.
Teams not only compete with their robots.
They also compete for other awards based on their judging interview and
engineering notebook. Sioux Center, in
addition to qualifying for state, also won the PTC Design Award. The intent of
the PTC Design Award is to expand the challenge, inspiring Teams to incorporate
industrial design into their robots. These elements can be shown in the
simplicity of the design as it applies to the tasks, the look and feel of the
robot, and how the design allows us to think of robots in new ways. The Design
aspect must serve a function – but they should also differentiate the robot in
a unique fashion – not an easy task with a limited set of parts and game
challenge.
Sioux Center was also a 3rd place finalist for the Inspire Award. The
highly sought-after Inspire Award is given to the Team that the Judges felt
truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. This Team serves as an inspiration to what
this program, and the young minds involved, can accomplish. The Team that
receives this Award has performed well in all Judging categories and was chosen
by the Judges as a model FIRSTTech Challenge Team. The Judges use Match
performance, observations made during interviews and in the pit area, the
Team’s Engineering Notebook, and performance on the playing field in
determining the winner.
The tentative agenda for the state event is as follows:
Friday, March 6: teams check in between 11am-3pm. Inspections and judging
occur on Friday.
Saturday, March 7: opening ceremony, qualification matches and closing
ceremony.
Members of the Team:
Jayden Vermeer
Anton Vonk
Cole Peterson
Jordan Nomansen
Graham Zomermaand
Matt Bruxvoordt
Keaton DeJong
Eric Keizer
Blake Boone
Emma Rathbun
Payton VanBeek
Jacob Schrader
Josh Rathbun
Sam DeJong
Our Business Sponsors are:
Interstates
Engineering Design Associates, Inc.
Premier Communications
Link Mfg.
